From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3–In rhythmic refrains, the homely desert denizen compares its lot in life with many other animals it believes are held in higher esteem. "Cats, you're aware,/can repose in a chair,/chickens can roost upon rails;/puppies are able to sleep in a stable,/and oysters/can slumber in pails./But no one supposes/a poor camel dozes–/anyplace does for me!" Carryl's 19th-century poem is enduringly silly, and the animal's self-deprecating lament is viewed with rather sardonic humor in Santore's full-page portraits that are at once elegant and comic. Facing pages featuring two quite different animals–parrots and poodles, kittens and pigs–provide strong images for read-aloud viewing. Their warmer tones contrast with the brown and gold double-page paintings of the ungainly camel in its desert terrain. The artist really has fun with this creature, painting it quite realistically and evoking fine humor in the expressiveness of its distinctive face and "lumpy/and bumpy and humpy" body. In a nighttime view, it rests in a moonlit Egyptian scene, and later it is struggling along carrying an entire nomad family and all of their worldly goods. "A camel comes handy/wherever it's sandy" and wherever a chuckle might do.
–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
*Starred Review* K-Gr. 3. It's hard to believe that this pleasing poem, by a poet who wrote during the same time and in the same vein as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, has not found its way into a picture-book version before now. It certainly has all the hallmarks of child-friendly verse: a clever idea, humor, and a sprightly rhyme. The words come right from the grumbling camel's mouth. Where canaries, parrots, and poodles have all sorts of tasty bits to eat, anything will do for the camel. As for resting places: "Cats, you're aware, can repose on a chair; chickens can roost upon rails. / Puppies are able to sleep in a stable and oysters can sleep in a pail." No one cares where or when the camel sleeps. Even the various animals' physiques come in for consideration, with the camel getting the short end of that stick, too. But it's really Santore's fabulous artwork that will catapult this into kids' eager hands. Although not anthropomorphized, the animals are wonderfully individualized in the illustrations, with such intelligent faces that they seem to have a spark of humanity. Richly colored and intensely detailed (one can almost see each curl on the sheep's wool), the close-up art, set against crisp white backgrounds, will be fun to look at by individuals or in groups.
Ilene CooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
